> Approach not the doors of the seat, they have been closed to your fathers and will be closed to your sons. There is no penalty for drawing near, as you cannot harm them. The seat is inviolate. You injure only yourself, by asking a question that should not be asked and receiving the inevitable answer: you are unworthy. Do not seek a reminder of the transgressions our fathers wrought on this world. The weight of their actions rest on your shoulders, and none who bear that sin may enter.
>
> - Traditional warning given to Aesvain pilgrims upon visiting Tija’s Sanctum.
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The room was dark, but that was nothing new. It had been dark yesterday and the day before that, the blackness layering thick and deep over the cool stone, wrapping around the jutting, script-covered protrusions and holding the curves of the great stone arch in a gentle embrace. It was an old dark, a comfortable dark.
And then, in an instant, it vanished. A great flash from the gateway threw back the shadows and cast the room into blinding relief, revealing all of the edges and corners that the blackness had hidden away. It lasted only a moment, however, quickly dwindling to cold, roving beams of light that swept over the room and the dull ember glow of qim that followed.
Sixteen figures stepped through the gate cautiously, surveying the room for several long minutes and finding nothing untoward. One shouted a quick command, and another freed the keystone from its mount. There was a final flash of radiance, and then silence.
“Well,” Mark said. “This all looks familiar.”
Arjun nodded, settling down on the floor to begin work on the keystone. “It appears to be an exact copy of our gateway room,” he said. “The dimensions, the pattern of the floor, everything. Hopefully this means the rest of the interior is similar as well.”
“We’re gonna wait on checking that out until you’ve got the crystal topped up and ready to go,” Mark said. “For all we know there’s a hundred zombies just chilling on the other side of that door, and if that’s the case I don’t want to be waiting around while you top up the tank.”
“Prudent,” Arjun said, taking the charging bracket from his pack and preparing the crystal. “It should only take about ten or fifteen minutes.”
Mark nodded. “Sounds good. Jackie needs some time to sweep the walls anyway.” He looked over at Jackie and Gusje, who were already methodically photographing the walls around the gate room.
Jesse swept his flashlight across the arc of the gateway, then clicked the beam off. “Feels odd in here,” he muttered. “Dry, dead.”
“I mean, sure,” Mark said. “I guess it’s a bit of a different atmosphere when you’re not sharing the space with a thousand refugees.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “It’s hard to explain, I’m not sure I would have noticed it if the transition wasn’t so sudden. There’s something wrong with this place.” He walked a few paces and laid his hand on the wall. “It’s like the feeling of being alone in a room after leaving a crowd. There’s nobody here.”
Mark arched an eyebrow. “Dude,” he said. “You’re being unnecessarily mystical. You could just say it’s a creepy old building.”
“He’s got the right of it,” Jyte said, walking up beside them. “I know what you’re saying, because we’ve all felt it too. When Tija died, something essential left Tinem Aesvai. The land’s been abandoned, left to die.”
“Well, aren’t you two just little rays of sunshine,” Mark muttered. “You might just have to get used to it. Jackie’s best estimates have us spending at least a week, and that’s making a lot of optimistic assumptions.”
Jesse bit his lip, then shook his head slowly. “We should try to be as quick as possible, it’s probably not healthy to stay here long. It’s missing… here, let me show you.” He took the asolan in one hand and laid the other on the hilt of his sword, then closed his eyes.
Across the room, Gusje looked around in confusion, as did several of the halberdiers. Jackie shivered and rubbed her shoulders, and Ajehet sneezed. Mark gave Jesse a suspicious look. “What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re doing something, aren’t you? You’re making the magic face.”
Jesse opened his eyes and smiled, taking his hand off the sword. The stale air of the room reasserted itself, and the lights seemed to shine a little less brightly than before. “I don’t pretend to understand it very well,” he said, “but from what we’ve seen and what Maja has said, the draam je qaraivat have a sort of field they project that spreads the vinesavai’s influence. She talked about it as ruud flow, regulating the energy that allows scripting to work. As evidenced by the asolan, I think it also has an effect on health - and possibly a negative one, if it’s not well-regulated.”
Mark blinked. “You can do that kind of stuff?” he asked incredulously. “When did that happen? I thought the sword just made you extra good at stabbing things and getting struck by lightning.”
“It’s the same as the trick I figured out in Sjatel,” Jesse said. “Pushing the dust from the storm back was the same general concept, like establishing a zone of control. I didn’t really put it all together until listening to Maja describe the stone array, but it makes sense.”
“If you say so,” Mark muttered. “I swear I didn’t feel a damn thing.”
“Those who’ve made a study of such things maintain that it takes talent, mindfulness and calm to discern the patterns of ruud around us,” Jyte chuckled. “So I’d not expect that you would, Cajet.”
Mark sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m liking this new name less every time I hear it,” he said. “So, what, you can act like a portable warding stone? That could be kinda handy, since the local stones are toast.”
Jesse frowned, letting his fingers brush lightly over the sword’s hilt. “Maybe,” he said. “I’m not sure. I don’t understand everything that the stones do to interfere with the silent ones. And even if I did, I don’t think I could push back against them for long. Even with the asolan I’m pretty limited in what I can do before the drain wipes me out.”
“I’d say you just need practice, except I really hope you don’t get the chance,” Mark said dryly. “With any luck you won’t have to use the damn sword at all.”
“We can only hope,” Jesse replied, his face solemn. Mark shot him an odd look, but didn’t comment further.
It only took a few minutes more before Jackie and Gusje finished their sweep of the room and moved to join them, followed shortly by Arjun. He held up the gate’s charge crystal triumphantly in one hand, glowing brightly. Thin, red burns were visible on the tips of his fingers.
“Done,” he said. “The bracket worked very well, although I think I should find some gloves before we use it again. The waste heat accumulates surprisingly fast, and there’s not that much mass in the bracket - after the second crystal it was far too hot to touch safely.”
“Considering the typical Aesvain hand size I think your gloves are going to have to be a custom job,” Jackie said, grinning at him. “Maybe you can work something out with one of them? Anyway, congratulations - if you had asked me a week ago if I thought you’d be making scripted tools I’d have called you crazy.”
Arjun laughed and shook his head. “I credit Tesu, stubborn as he’s been. It’s not actually that complex when you get down to it. It’s no wonder the guild keeps the knowledge restricted, their monopoly would vanish overnight if people knew it was this easy.”
Mark shook his head. “Easy for you, maybe. Somehow I doubt a random melon farmer would pick it up that fast.” He clapped his hands together, drawing the attention of the group. “Anyway, let’s talk next steps. We’ve got our exit figured out, so we’re going to start moving carefully through the building. Gusje, don’t open any doors until we’ve cleared each area. Stay in groups, don’t let yourselves get separated.”
He turned to Ajehet. “If the main doors are still sealed we’ll probably leave them shut for today,” he said. “I know you wanted to take a look around, but there’s no reason to poke our heads out right away. If they’re already open, though, try and stay close. Walk on stone or hard-packed soil where you can, and stay far away from any sand.”
“I’m the head scout for our company,” Ajehet grumbled. “I know how to-”
Mark grabbed the shorter man’s shoulder and gave him a serious look. “There are no stones here,” he said. “You won’t hear them coming, you won’t see them attack. You will die. Stay off the sand.” He held the stare until he was sure the scout appreciated the gravity of his warning. Ajehet nodded slowly in acknowledgement, a discomfited look on his face.
“I’ll come with them,” Jesse said, walking up to stand beside Mark. “At the very least I think I can tell if anything dangerous is close by.”
“You gonna do some rock practice?” Mark asked skeptically.
Jesse shook his head. “Not if I can help it,” he said. “If we get into a fight, we’ve already lost. We won’t be able to come back here if they know we have access to the gate.”
“Just so we’re all on the same page,” Mark grumbled, turning to face the remaining four. “You all good?” he asked.
Jackie nodded. “Gusje and I will stick close,” she confirmed. “You don’t have to worry about us wandering off, we probably won’t even have time to finish this floor today. Arjun, Tasja, either of you want to come with?”
“I’ll likely stay here,” Arjun said. “Aside from being by the keystone, I’d like to start taking a look at some of the script in this room. Tasja, if you’d stay to help I’d appreciate it.” Tasja nodded, and Mark straightened up with a satisfied expression.
“And there we go,” he said. “All right, everyone - looks like we’re all set.” He gestured to the sealed door at the far end of the gateway room, and all eyes turned to Gusje. “You’re up,” he said. “Let’s hope nobody’s home.”
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It was incredible how quickly the wondrous became normal, Gusje reflected. The tablet device was unlike anything she had ever seen before. Jackie had showed her what it could do, made it display pictures, play sounds and even made it display a few chaotic, jumbled scenes where the pictures moved and spoke. It was like a mirror that reflected from another time and place.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
She tapped the screen and the light on the back of the tablet flared as it captured a picture. They had been methodically working their way through one of the convoluted rooms in the facility for long enough that Jackie’s arms had tired of holding up the tablet. Gusje had volunteered to take over with some trepidation, only to discover herself becoming quickly inured to the tablet’s aura of mystery.
It was a machine, at the end of the day. A wonderful machine, perhaps, but just a machine. There was no comparison with something like Maja, an entity which could act of its own volition. The tablet merely did what she commanded, something she was becoming increasingly proficient at.
The two halberdiers shadowing their footsteps seemed to disagree with her unspoken assessment, however. Gusje had felt the stares when it became widely known among the Aesvain that she alone could access the secured portions of the Sanctum, and her easy manipulation of the tablet was unlikely to help matters in that regard.
She wanted to turn back to the two men and thrust the tablet into their hands, make them understand that there was nothing special about her, nothing singular that let her manipulate the tablet. It wasn’t their attention that rankled, but the focus on the unearned achievement of simply holding the tablet, or of being Cereinem. Never mind that she stood side by side with the soldiers at Sjatel and threw fire at the advancing ranks of the dead, no.
She knew which one her father would value more highly. Offering a unique talent to one’s family was special, but hardly praiseworthy - there was no choice to be made, only an obligation. Yet, for the Aesvain...
Jackie nudged her shoulder. “What’s the matter, you falling asleep?” she asked. “We can take a break if you need one.”
Gusje shook her head, embarrassed. “Sorry, no,” she said. “Just lost in my own head.”
“Uh-huh,” Jackie said, giving her an evaluating look. She bent down and plucked the tablet from Gusje’s hands, ignoring her protests. “Break time,” she insisted. “We’ve been taking pictures all day. Sit down, eat something, relax.” Jackie fished in her bag and came out with a handful of energy bars scavenged from the remaining MREs, handing one to Gusje and tossing one each to the surprised halberdiers.
Gusje settled down against a wall and took a bite of the sweet, rich bar, washing it down with a swig of water still fresh-tasting from the mountain lake. She had to admit, the forced break was welcome after so long. She looked down at the tablet in her lap, swiping through the last several pictures to see if any were unusably blurry.
Her neck prickled with the sensation of being watched. She turned towards Jackie and found the other woman grinning at her. “What?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Jackie replied. “It’s just fun watching you with the tablet. A couple days ago you’d never even heard of a user interface and now you’re a natural. I knew a couple designers back home that would have loved to see this - they’d probably get enough out of it to write a paper.” She shook her head, seeing Gusje’s confused look. “It’s just interesting. It’s something from my life that everyone knows, so I’ve never really seen someone encounter it for the first time.”
Gusje shook her head, feeling heat in her cheeks. “I can’t imagine things like this being everywhere,” she muttered. “What do you do with all of them? Just take pictures of things all the time?”
Jackie burst into giggles, making the two halberdiers look up in alarm from their frustrated attempts to open the energy bar packaging. “Some people do, yes,” Jackie laughed. “But that’s not really what they’re for. Mostly it’s, uh.” Jackie bit her lip, adopting the expression that Gusje had come to associate with Jackie ransacking her Ceiqa vocabulary for appropriate words.
“All right, it’s like this,” Jackie said. “You know the tablet can hold stuff, right? Well, it can also ask other machines like it to share what they hold, and they can hold a lot more. Any information you wanted, you could use the tablet to find it.”
Gusje frowned. “What sort of information?” she asked. “More than just pictures?”
Jackie nodded emphatically, sweeping her arms wide. “Everything,” she confirmed. “Maps of the world, what the weather will be like tomorrow, books on art or science, pictures of cute animals, recipes for cooking, jokes, stories, instructions on how to do anything at all. It’s pretty close to being everything that there is to know, all right there on the tablet.”
“That’s… amazing,” Gusje said. “I thought it was incredible enough just for the pictures. I wouldn’t even know what to do with all that.”
“Amazing is relative,” Jackie shrugged. “You have a glove that throws fireballs and a coin that lets you live for many lifetimes. Even with the ability to look up anything in the world, most people back home would say that those are the most amazing things they’ve ever heard of. And even the entire sum of our knowledge together doesn’t really measure up to a being like Maja. We’re still well short of her level.”
Gusje laughed, despite feeling a pang at the words. “You seem to have done more with less,” she said. “Your people built all of the great cities and flying machines you showed me through the tablet, and mine seem to have just destroyed themselves.”
“Yeah, well, don’t count us out just yet,” Jackie muttered, tucking the bar’s wrapper into a pocket. “You good to keep going, or did you want to rest a bit longer?”
Gusje stuffed the last bite of the bar into her mouth and scowled up at Jackie. “Dinnt wanna stopf inna firs plafe,” she said, grabbing the tablet and ignoring Jackie’s sudden grin. She swallowed and shot the taller woman a glare, then turned to the halberdiers. “You two ready?”
The nearest one gave her a pained look and stowed the still-unopened energy bar in a pouch on his belt. “Whenever you’d like to continue,” he sighed.
They swept through the remainder of the room without incident, tracing their steps back to the main hallway and moving through to the next passage. Gusje aimed her light into the doorway, sweeping it over the script-covered walls, the dusty floor, the-
The skeletal hand laying outstretched just aside from the doorway.
She made a small exclamation of surprise and stepped backwards, reaching reflexively for her gauntlet as the two halberdiers rushed forward. Cautiously, one advanced into the room and stared to the side for a long moment. He shook his head and motioned that they should come inside.
“Just a body,” he said. “Not a silent one. Old, it’s little more than bones.”
Gusje poked her head around the corner, keeping her hand on the gauntlet. A dusty skeleton shrouded in rags and scraps of decaying leather sat on the bare stone. Bits of browned skin still clung to the ribs, stretched tight and paper-thin over the old bones like a macabre drumhead. Its arm stretched out with fingers splayed, as if reaching for something long-vanished. Its other hand was held over its chest, still curled into a fist.
She felt her heart beat faster as she looked at the skeleton’s other hand. Around the wrist were the tattered remains of a leather cord, the braided pattern still discernible under the dust and age. Carefully, Gusje bent down beside the body and reached for the cord - but the ancient leather disintegrated at her touch, sloughing into little more than dust that spilled down over the bones.
Below the body, resting on the stone under a thick layer of dust, she saw a small coin. With trembling fingers she slid it out from under the skeleton’s ribs and picked it up, brushing it clean so she could make out the markings. Even before she saw the familiar design, the weight and size confirmed it for her - this was an asolan, identical to her own. The body had belonged to a Cereinem.
“Huh,” Jackie observed, leaning in to study the coin. “Hey, Modran,” she said, turning to address one of the halberdiers. “You said this place has been sealed up, right? None of the gold-cloaks lived in the Sanctum?”
The halberdier she had addressed shook his head. “The gold-cloaks who had the honor of guarding the seat would’ve stopped anyone who dared try,” he said. “None had breached those doors since a time before all memory.”
Jackie nodded, then paused. “You guys don’t have any issues being inside now?” she asked.
Modran gave her a solemn look. “It is no longer the seat,” he said.
“...right,” Jackie muttered, wincing. “Sorry.” She returned her gaze to the dusty skeleton, bending down to look at it. “So if nobody entered since way back in the day, there’s a chance this guy was one of the original Caretakers. One of Gusje’s people before they were Cereinem.”
Gusje looked at the coin in her palm. In every respect, it was identical to her own. “I wonder how long he lived here,” she said. “And why he stayed, rather than seeking out his kin.”
“We could look around and find out,” Jackie suggested. “If he was here for any length of time, he would have had a place to sleep and keep his stuff. There might be some clues there that would help us understand what he was doing here.”
She walked to the end of the corridor, poking her head around the corner. “This place is like a maze, though,” she muttered, disappearing around the bend. “I wonder if he wouldn’t have set up on the upper levels, like the-”
Jackie stopped speaking suddenly, then darted back around the corner at a dead run. Her face was pale, and she was breathing heavily. The halberdiers rushed to the corner with their weapons readied, only to stop in puzzlement as nothing presented itself.
Gusje grabbed Jackie’s hands, feeling the clammy sweat on her palms. “What was it?” she asked. Jackie’s eyes were wide, panicked, and it was several heartbeats before she closed them and slowed her breathing, seeming to calm down.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was nothing. I just looked back and realized that I couldn’t see any of you, and then I remembered that there are no stones here and I just…” She trailed off, making a frustrated gesture. “I’m sorry, it was silly of me.”
The halberdiers exchanged a confused look, but Gusje frowned. The travelers had not spoken of their time in the deep desert often, saying only that they were attacked by the silent ones and describing the running horde of bodies that pursued them from their camp. They said more than they knew, however, and Gusje had managed to piece some of it together. She knew that there had been many, many more of them, that the attacks had begun slowly and happened over the course of days. Jackie in particular seemed reluctant to speak much of it. Gusje had caught her staring at a spot of blood in the rear of the truck once, oblivious to the world.
Whatever had happened, it had left its mark on Jackie. Gusje grabbed her hand and squeezed, receiving a grateful look in response.
“Thanks,” Jackie muttered. “I’m all right, really. It was nothing.”
Gusje smiled at her, keeping her grip on Jackie’s hand as they continued forward through the narrow passages. They found no sign of the dead man’s living space in that set of hallways, but when they crossed the main hall Gusje knew they had found the right place. Battered wooden shelves still stood against the wall, although some had collapsed to tip their contents onto the floor. Those that still stood held a variety of items - glass jars with unidentifiable contents, shriveled wooden boxes, black stone caskets wrapped with intricate scriptwork.
A flash of color caught her eye, and Gusje tugged on Jackie’s hand to draw her attention to a small transparent sphere, pristine under its coating of dust. In the center of the sphere there was a spray of small purple flowers, looking freshly-cut and vibrant. The two women stared at it for a moment.
“Whoever this guy was, he had some neat stuff,” Jackie said. “We should be careful, though. Everyone’s been telling us that it’s dangerous to go poking around old scriptwork. Definitely don’t touch any of those black boxes, those look way too similar to the ones in the scriptsmiths’ vault.”
Gusje nodded, walking further into the room. The sphere with the flower proved to be the exception, as most of the room’s contents definitely showed their age. Most had rotted away to nothing, or were hidden in jars darkened with foul-looking substances that rendered the glass opaque.
At the end of the room there was a collapsed wooden framework that might have once been a bed. Beside it was a small chair and table. Gusje let her fingers trail lightly over the wood.
There was a clicking noise, and a drawer popped out of the end table. Startled, Gusje jumped back - although her reaction was muted compared to the jumpy halberdiers, who were finding the strangeness of the room much less tolerable. Carefully, she pulled the drawer open. Inside lay a small, disorganized stack of translucent sheets with neat writing upon them, similar to the documents they had found in Sjatel.
Where the Sjatel pages had been torn and scorched, however, these were utterly pristine. She picked up the top sheet and looked at the text.
It has been many days since I’ve seen the outside, and I’m beginning to think that it will be many more. Tija hasn’t been able to tell me much of what’s going on - not because she’s unaware, but because whatever this event was apparently falls under a restricted classification so severe that she refuses to even discuss the necessary parameters for disclosure. That in itself is an answer, as I’ve only ever heard that level of restriction applied to semantic stabilization projects. I’m not sure what terrifies me more - what that implies regarding the evident disaster outside, or that someone may have seen this coming and been powerless to stop it.
Gusje looked up, feeling her heart beat faster. “Jackie, I think we need to get the others.” Jackie gave her a questioning look, and Gusje held up the page. “I think that man came here before everything ended,” she said, holding up the thick sheaf of plasticine pages. “He lived through the end, trapped in here - and he wrote it all down.”